Marriage Delayed and Equalized: Effects of Early U.S. Compulsory Schooling Laws on Marital Patterns by Race

Identifying a causal relationship between education and marital status poses methodological challenges. Using regression discontinuity analyses of U.S. Census data from 1910 and 1930, I estimate effects of early U.S. compulsory schooling laws on marital patterns by gender and race. Results from 1910 suggest compulsory laws had heterogeneous effects by race and gender, reducing the likelihood of being married only among non-white men. Results from 1930 suggest compulsory schooling decreased the racial gap in likelihood of being married and in age at first marriage by at least 24%. Contemporary implications include potential benefits of extended compulsory schooling for racial equality

Educational Expansion and Occupational Change: U.S. Compulsory Schooling Laws and the Occupational Structure 1850-1930*

This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Social Forces following peer review. The version of record Emily Rauscher; Educational Expansion and Occupational Change: US Compulsory Schooling Laws and the Occupational Structure 1850–1930. Soc Forces 2015; 93 (4): 1397-1422. doi: 10.1093/sf/sou127 is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/sou127During the US Industrial Revolution, educational expansion may have created skilled jobs through innovation and skill upgrading or reduced skilled jobs by mechanizing production. Such arguments contradict classic sociological work that treats education as a sorting mechanism, allocating individuals to fixed occupations. I capitalize on state differences in the timing of compulsory school attendance laws to ask whether raising the minimum level of schooling: (1) increased school attendance rate; or (2) shifted state occupational distributions away from agricultural toward skilled and non-manual occupation categories. Using state-level panel data constructed from 1850–1930 censuses and state-year fixed effects models, I find that compulsory laws significantly increased school attendance rates, particularly among lower-class children, and shifted the categorical distribution toward skilled and non-manual occupations. Thus, rather than deskilling through mechanization, raising the minimum level of education seems to have created skilled jobs and raised the occupational distribution through skill-biased technological change. Results suggest that education was not merely a sorting mechanism, supporting the importance of education as an institution even around the turn of the century

More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Children and Poverty in 2009, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjcp20/current

Plastic and Immobile: Unequal Intergenerational Mobility by Genetic Sensitivity Score within Sibling Pairs

Contrary to traditional biological arguments, the differential susceptibility model suggests genotype may moderate rather than mediate parent-child economic similarity. Using family fixed effects models of Add Health sibling data, I investigate the relationship between an index of sensitive genotypes and intergenerational mobility. Full, same sex sibling comparisons hold constant parental characteristics and address the non-random distribution of genotype that reduces internal validity in nationally representative samples. Across multiple measures of young adult financial standing, those with more copies of sensitive genotypes achieve lower economic outcomes than their sibling if they are from a low income context but fare better from a high income context. This genetic sensitivity to parental income entails lower intergenerational mobility. Results support the differential susceptibility model and contradict simplistic genetic explanations for intergenerational inequality, suggesting sensitive genotypes are not inherently positive or negative but rather increase dependence on parental income and reduce mobility

Effects of Early U.S. Compulsory Schooling Laws on Educational Assortative Mating: The Importance of Context

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13524-015-0402-5.Modernization theory predicts rising education should increase assortative mating by education and decrease sorting by race. Recent research suggests effects of educational expansion depend on contextual factors such as economic development. Using log-linear and log multiplicative models of male household heads ages 36 to 75 in the 1940 U.S. census data, the first census with educational attainment information, I investigate how educational assortative mating changed with one instance of educational expansion: early U.S. compulsory school attendance laws. To improve on existing research and distinguish effects of expansion from changes due to particular years or cohorts, I capitalize on state variation in the timing of these compulsory laws (which ranged from 1852 to 1918). Aggregate results suggest compulsory laws had minimal impact on assortative mating. However, separate analyses by region (and supplemental analyses by race) reveal that assortative mating by education decreased with the laws in the South, but increased in the North. Whether due to economic, legal, political, or other differences, results suggest the implications of educational expansion for marital sorting depend on context. Contemporary implications are discussed in light of President Obama’s suggested extension of compulsory schooling

Hidden Gains: Effects of Early U.S. Compulsory Schooling Laws on Attendance and Attainment by Social Background*

Research on early compulsory schooling laws finds minimal effects on attendance but fails to investigate heterogeneous effects. Similarly, research proposes limited contexts in which expansion policies can increase equality but has difficulty separating policy and cohort effects. Capitalizing on within-country variation in timing of early compulsory laws, passed 1852 to 1918, I ask whether they improved equality of school attendance or educational attainment by class, nativity, and race. Based on census data, compulsory laws increased equality of attendance and attainment, particularly among young men in the North, where the laws reduced class and race gaps by over 20%. Early compulsory schooling laws provided “hidden gains,” missed in previous analyses, suggesting policies that raise minimum schooling can increase educational equality in certain contexts